A P R / M A Y 2 0 1 4

THESUIT

EXHILARATING. MAGICAL. MUSICAL.

Created and Performed by BILL IRWIN & DAVID SHINER

Bloomberg

“ ”

“EBULLIENTAND CHARMING!”

The New York Times

Directed by TINA LANDAU

SIGNATURE THEATRE’S PRODUCTION OF

From the stars and creators of the A.C.T. hit comedy Fool Moon

And Opening in 2015 . . .

THE STR AND THEATERPremiere production to be announced soon.

A . C . T . ’ S I N T I M A T E N E W P E R F O R M A N C E S P A C E L O C A T E D I N T H E C E N T R A L M A R K E T D I S T R I C T

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by A N N E W A S H B U R N

Music by M I C H A E L F R I E D M A N

A mother recounts the last days in the life of her son, Jesus, in this lyrical and daring work.

A DYSTOPIAN COMEDY

SONDHEIM’S MOST RAPTUROUS MUSICAL

THE GLOBAL FAMILY DRAMA

2013 TONY AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST PLAY

STOPPARD RETURNS TO A.C.T.

“One of the TOP TEN PLAYS OF 2013” The New York Times

Will The Simpsons represent our collective memory after humanity has faced its darkest hour?

by C O L M T Ó I B Í N

Directed by C A R E Y P E R L O F F

“ELECTRIFYING . . . shatteringly, trenchantly human” Bloomberg

Book by H U G H W H E E L E R

Music and lyrics by STEPHEN SONDHEIM

by K W A M E K W E I-A R M A H

“No score of Sondheim’s is as BUOYANT an example of MUSICAL COMEDY”The Wall Street Journal

“[Kwame Kwei-Armah] is one of BRITAIN’S MOST TALENTED and DISTINCTIVE WRITERS”WYPR/NPR Radio

Stephen Sondheim’s bittersweet tale of lost love, scandalous infidelity, and young passions intertwining over a midsummer’s eve

A scorchingly comic, poignant story of the constraints and complexities of generation gaps among immigrants—and the undeniable forces that connect us all

By T O M S T O P P A R D

Directed by C A R E Y P E R L O F F

“WITTY, entertaining, and ROMANTIC”The New York Times

Two men, separated by 50 years, explore the mystery of a freethinking erotic poet and the Indian painter she loves.

SEA SONThrilling NEW WORKS. Incredible PREMIERES. Ravishing MUSIC . A grand OPENING.

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April 2014Volume 12, No. 7

Paul Heppner Publisher

Susan Peterson Design & Production Director

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Encore Arts Programs is published monthly by Encore Media Group to serve musical and theatrical events in Western Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area. All rights reserved. ©2014 Encore Media Group. Reproduction without written permission is prohibited.

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Michael Tilson Thomas conductor Stuart Skelton tenor (Peter Grimes) Elza van den Heever soprano

(Ellen Orford) Alan Opie baritone (Captain Balstrode) Ann Murray mezzo-soprano (Auntie) Nancy Maultsby mezzo-soprano

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Stuart Skelton sings the lead role in Peter

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Supported by The Barbro and Bernard Osher Staged Production Fund.

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JUN 12–15 Gil Shaham plays Prokofiev

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14 15 SEASON PREVIEWA.C.T.

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San Francisco's

T H E A T E R C O M P A N YAMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER, San Francisco’sTony Award–winning nonprofit theater, nurtures the art oflive theater through dynamic productions, intensive actortraining, and an ongoing engagement with our community.Under the leadership of Artistic Director Carey Perloff and Executive Director Ellen Richard, we embrace our responsibility to conserve, renew, and reinvent our relationship to the rich theatrical traditions and literatures that are our collective legacy, while exploring new artistic forms and new communities. A commitment to the highest standards informs every aspect of our creative work. Founded by pioneer of the regional theater movement William Ball, A.C.T. opened its first San Francisco season in 1967. Since then, we’ve performed more than 350 productions to a combined audience of more than seven million people. We reach more than 250,000 people through our productions and programs every year.

The beautiful, historic Geary Theater—rising from the rubble of the catastrophic earthquake and fires of 1906 and immediately hailed as the “perfect playhouse”—has been our home since the beginning. When the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake ripped a gaping hole in the ceiling, destroying the proscenium arch and dumping tons of debris on the first six rows of orchestra seats, the San Francisco community rallied together to raise a record-breaking $30 million to rebuild it. The theater reopened in 1996 with a production of The Tempest directed by Perloff, who took over after A.C.T.’s second artistic director, gentleman artist Ed Hastings, retired in 1992.

Perloff’s 20-season tenure has been marked by groundbreaking productions of classical works and new translations creatively colliding with exceptional contemporary theater; cross-disciplinary performances and international collaborations; and “locavore” theater—theater made by, for, and about the San Francisco area. Her fierce commitment to audience engagement ushered in a new era of InterACT events and dramaturgical publications, inviting everyone to explore what goes on behind the scenes.

A.C.T.’s 45-year-old conservatory is at the center of our work. Led by Melissa Smith, our three-year, fully accredited Master of Fine Arts Program has moved to the forefront of America’s actor training programs, and our intensive Summer Training Congress attracts enthusiasts from around the world. Other programs include the world-famous Young Conservatory for students ages 8 to 19, led by 25-year veteran Craig Slaight, and Studio A.C.T., our expansive course of study for adults. Our alumni often grace our mainstage and perform around the Bay Area, as well as stages and screens across the country.

A.C.T. also brings the benefits of theater-based arts education to more than 9,000 Bay Area school students each year. Central to our ACTsmart education programs, run by Director of Education Elizabeth Brodersen, is the longstanding Student Matinee (SMAT) program, which has brought tens of thousands of young people to A.C.T. performances since 1968. We also provide touring Will on Wheels Shakespeare productions, teaching artist residencies, in-school workshops, and in-depth study materials to Bay Area schools and after-school programs.

With our increased presence in the Central Market neighborhood marked by the opening of The Costume Shop theater and the current renovation of The Strand Theater across from UN Plaza, A.C.T. is poised to continue its leadership role in securing the future of theater for San Francisco and the nation.

Nancy Livingston Chair

Kirke M. Hasson President

Celeste Ford Vice Chair

Priscilla Geeslin Vice Chair

Jeff Ubben Vice Chair

Lawrence P. Varellas Treasurer

Steven L. Swig Secretary

Alan L. Stein Chair Emeritus

Lesley Ann Clement Daniel E. Cohn

Robyn Coles Richard T. Davis

Michael G. Dovey Olympia Dukakis

Sarah Earley Robert F. Ferguson

Linda Jo Fitz Françoise G. Fleishhacker

Ken Fulk Marilee K. Gardner

Kaatri B. Grigg Dianne Hoge Jo S. Hurley David ibnAle

Jeri Lynn Johnson The Rev. Alan Jones

James H. Levy Heather Stallings Little

Michael P. Nguyen Carey Perloff

Jennifer Povlitz Robina Riccitiello

Ellen Richard David Riemer

Dan Rosenbaum Sally Rosenblatt

Abby Sadin Schnair Edward C. Schultz III

Jeff Spears Diana L. Starcher

Patrick S. Thompson Adriana Vermut

Nola Yee

Emeritus Advisory Board

Barbara Bass Bakar Rena Bransten

Jack Cortis Joan Danforth Dagmar Dolby

Bill Draper John Goldman

James Haire Kent Harvey Sue Yung Li

Christine Mattison Joan McGrath

Deedee McMurtry Mary S. Metz Toni Rembe Rusty Rueff Joan Sadler

Cheryl Sorokin Alan L. Stein

Barry Lawson Williams Carlie Wilmans

Abby Sadin Schnair Chair

Nancy Carlin Rosemary Cozzo

Bill Criss Françoise G. Fleishhacker Christopher Hollenbeck

Linda Kurtz Jennifer Lindsay Andrew McClain

Mary Metz Dileep Rao Toni Rembe

Sally Rosenblatt Anne Shonk

Melissa Smith Alan L. Stein

Tara J. Sullivan Patrick S. Thompson

Laurie H. Ubben

A M E R I C A N C O N S E R V A T O R Y T H E A T E R B O A R D O F T R U S T E E ST H E B O A R D O F D I R E C T O R S O F T H E M . F . A . P R O G R A M

American Conservatory Theater was founded in 1965 by William Ball.Edward Hastings, Artistic Director 1986–92

AC T- S F.O R G | 4 1 5 .74 9. 2 2 2 8 | CONNECT WITH US

8 14 16 L E T T E R F R O M T H E A R T I S T I C D I R E C T O R

R E M E M B E R I N G K O F I F Iby Shannon Stockwell

C A N T H E M B Aby Dan Rubin

A.C.T. volunteers provide an invaluable service with their time, enthusiasm, and love of theater. Opportunities include helping out in our performing arts library and ushering in our theater.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT ACT-SF.ORG/VOLUNTEER.

VOLUNTEER!EDITORDan Rubin

CONTRIBUTORSShannon Stockwell

What’s Inside

A B O U T T H E P L A YAt A.C.T.’s FREE InterACT events you can mingle with cast members, join interactive workshops with theater artists, or meet fellow theatergoers at hosted events in our lounges. Join us for our upcoming production of The Orphan of Zhao and InterACT with us!........................................B I K E T O T H E T H E A T E R N I G H T Ju n e 4 , 8 p m In partnership with the SF Bicycle Coalition, ride your bike to A.C.T. and take advantage of secure bike parking, low-priced tickets, and happy hour prices at our preshow mixer.

........................................P R O L O G U E Ju n e 10 , 5 : 3 0 p m Go deeper with a fascinating preshow discussion and Q&A. Can’t make this event? Watch it live—online! Visit act-sf.org/interact for details.

........................................T H E A T E R O N T H E C O U C H * Ju n e 1 3 , 8 p m Take part in a lively postshow discussion in our lower-level lounge with Dr. Mason Turner, chief of psychiatry at SF’s Kaiser Permanente Medical Center.

........................................A U D I E N C E E X C H A N G E S * Ju n e 17, 7 p m Ju n e 2 2 & 2 5 a t 2 p m Join in an exciting Q&A with the cast following the show.

........................................O U T W I T H A . C . T .* Ju n e 18 , 8 p m Mix and mingle at this hosted postshow LGTB party.

........................................W I N E S E R I E S Ju n e 2 4 , 7 p m Meet fellow theatergoers at this hosted wine tasting event in our third- floor Sky Lounge.

........................................P L A Y T I M E Ju n e 2 8 , 1p m Get hands-on with theater at this interactive preshow workshop.

To learn more about attending InterACT events, visit act-sf.org/interact.

* Events take place immediately following the performance.

DON'T JUST SIT THERE . . .

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From the

A R T I S T I C D I R E C T O R

This is perhaps Brook’s greatest gift to the theater: his ability

to stimulate, between audience member and performer, a

deep connection that is both childlike and mythic. His work

demands attention, participation, and generosity, and it repays

that investment a thousandfold.

At the end of The Suit at BAM, I ran backstage and told

whomever would listen that I wanted to bring the production

to San Francisco. It fits so perfectly into our passion for

exploring world cultures through music and language, as

we’ve done with The Black Rider, The Overcoat, Stuck Elevator,

and many more. So it is with great pride that we share this

magical work with you in the hope that it will not only give

you insight into the humanity and tribulations of young people

in apartheid South Africa, but also open your minds to the

multiple possibilities of storytelling inherent in a great theatrical

imagination.

The Suit paves the way for our next global adventure, The

Orphan of Zhao, a vivid Chinese epic about fathers and sons,

heroism and betrayal, sacrifice and survival. We have assembled

some of the country’s most remarkable Asian American actors

and designers to give life to this fascinating thriller, rendered in

English by the poet and journalist James Fenton, and filled with

stirring songs by Byron Au Yong, composer of Stuck Elevator.

Zhao is a chance to introduce audiences to one of the greatest

stories in the Chinese canon and make it immediate to a

contemporary audience while honoring its ancient roots.

Those of you who have been coming to A.C.T. for some

time know how much we treasure theatricality and the power of

the imagination. Next season, we have many riches in store. The

plays we have lined up are all about memory: how we attempt

to recreate the past through dazzling fragments of what we

remember; how storytelling is a constant retelling, reimagining,

and misinterpreting of history; and how we as audience

members participate in that recreation.

So it is perfect that we are opening our 2014–15 season

with Old Hats, an explosive new work by two of the most

brilliant clowns in the world, Bill Irwin and David Shiner. Ever

since their landmark Fool Moon, Bill and David have wanted

to create a piece about what happens to clowns when they get

Dear Friends:

Welcome to The Suit! It is a joy to bring this magical piece of

international theater to the Geary stage, and to celebrate the

life and work of legendary director Peter Brook, who has been a

hero of mine for as long as I’ve been in the theater. Brook’s slim

volume The Empty Space changed the way an entire generation

thought about our field, reminding us that at its essence, theater

is the alchemy that happens between an actor and a spectator

in the “empty space” we call a stage, and that it succeeds or fails

according to how visceral that experience is. Brook’s insistence

that theater must evolve just as life evolves is an ongoing

invitation to theater-makers to rigorously reexamine our craft

and to strip away outworn assumptions.

Brook himself is the master of reinvention: he triumphed

at the Royal Shakespeare Company in his mid 20s and then

left mainstream theater behind to travel the world in search

of new ways of storytelling, and finally decamped to a ruined

old vaudeville house in north Paris to create a laboratory and

theater center that welcomed artists of every nationality and

background to explore astonishing new ways of making work. I

have always gone to see Brook’s productions as a kind of bracing

tonic and a reminder of what theater is capable of. But I had no

idea how quickly I would fall in love with The Suit.

I first saw this production at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of

Music), knowing only that it was based on a rather brutal short

story by the great South African writer Can Themba. Within

moments, I was swept away by the magical vision of Brook

and his associate Marie-Hélène Estienne, who created an entire

world onstage with a carpet, a few clothing racks and chairs,

three exceptional actors, and three multitalented musicians. The

Suit tells the tale of a couple living in a lively town in South

Africa in the 1950s and of what happens when the wife is

discovered to be having an affair. But it is so much bigger than

that. It’s about betrayal and loss, about the pressures of living in

a society explicitly built on racism, and the joys of friendship,

love, and music that can occasionally transcend the sorrows of

life.

I found that, because of the actors’ specificity in so simple

and abstract a world, much is left to the audience’s imagination,

and the more we engage, the richer the experience becomes.

T H E S U I T / 9CONNECT WITH US

older. The hilarious and heartbreaking fruit of their quest is a

show (originally developed at Signature Theatre in New York)

that takes them into cyberspace and beyond, but always returns

them to the totally human anxieties over love and loss, aching

bones, and the indelible memory of what they once were. Old

Hats is a metaphysical eruption of hilarity and humanity by

master artists working at the peak of their craft.

Another kind of memory game is happening in Colm

Tóibín’s fiercely lyrical Tony Award–nominated one-woman

show, Testament, which recounts in riveting detail Mary’s

personal narrative of the last days in the life of her son,

Jesus. Held under house arrest until she cooperates with the

authorities, Tóibín’s unforgettable Mary grieves for her child

while questioning the motives of those who would deify him.

How do legends form? Who has the right to rewrite history?

Whose memory counts in the end? Tóibín, a celebrated

Irish novelist, has created in Mary a character of astonishing

poignancy, wit, ferocity, and vulnerability—and legendary

Canadian actress Seana McKenna (whom many of you just

saw in Napoli!) will bring her to blazing life on the Geary stage.

With potent contemporary echoes of mothers around the

world who have lost sons to the fervor of coercive movements,

Testament asks us unsettling questions about faith, fanaticism,

and family.

Like Tóibín, playwright Anne Washburn asks big questions

about the slippery nature of memory in Mr. Burns, her

dystopian comedy about a group of post-apocalyptic survivors

trying to recreate from memory the “Cape Feare” episode of

The Simpsons. Washburn, a Bay Area native, has written an

ingenious salute to the resilience of storytelling, asking us, “If

you lost everything, what would it take to rebuild your culture?”

A play that was hailed in New York for leaving audiences “dizzy

with the scope and dazzle of its ideas,” Mr. Burns makes all of

us responsible for the preservation of civilization as we watch a

fragment of pop culture become the raft on which we float.

Memory also looms large in Tom Stoppard’s exquisite

Indian Ink, which we are revisiting next season in collaboration

with Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, after our

American premiere of the play 15 years ago. Of all of Stoppard’s

plays, Indian Ink is perhaps his most romantic—and also most

personal. Stoppard grew up in India during World War II, and

out of his memories he has created a stunning time-travel play

about the relationship between an English poet and an Indian

painter in 1930, and how that relationship is discovered (and

misinterpreted) years later by those who love them.

It is fortuitous that we will be presenting this magical

play about poetry, passion, and missed opportunities in the

same season as a musical that perfectly encapsulates those

themes: Stephen Sondheim’s sumptuous A Little Night

Music, which will be directed by Mark Lamos. Filled with

Sondheim’s signature wit and some of his most gorgeous

melodies (including the beloved and haunting treasure

“Send in the Clowns”), this is a bittersweet tale of lost love,

scandalous infidelity, and young passions that intertwine over a

midsummer’s eve at a country home in 1900s Sweden. It will be

a luscious way to usher in the summer.

When I read Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Let There Be Love, I

realized how deeply memory and reimagining lie at the heart of

every immigrant experience. In this intimate and disarmingly

honest play, a West Indian immigrant to London who is

estranged from his daughter finds a kind of new awakening, and

a new reckoning with his past, when he comes to know a young

Polish caregiver assigned to his case. Filled with the sumptuous

jazz standards that pour forth from his beloved record player,

Let There Be Love is about what can happen when we open our

minds to the possibility of change.

And there’s also the opening production of The Strand

Theater yet to be announced! We are in for a tremendously

exciting season, and we truly hope you will join us for all of it.

Carey Perloff

Artistic Director

FEATURING BD WONG

U. S . P R E M I E R E P R O D U C T I O N

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SAN FRANCISCO’S PREMIERE NONPROFIT THEATER COMPANY

“HAUNTING . . . [a] drama hewn out of a myth that speaks across

the centuries”

THE GUARDIAN

“An EMOTIONALLY PIERCING marvel”

THE TIMES OF LONDON

THE ORPHAN OF ZHAO

NEW ADAPTATION BY JAMES FENTON DIRECTED BY CAREY PERLOFFA COPRODUCTION WITH LA JOLLA PLAYHOUSE

With roots dating back to the fourth century BCE,

The Orphan of Zhao is a beguiling mystery—Shakespearean in

scope, it is often described as the Chinese Hamlet. Zhao begins

in the aftermath of a violent coup, as a country doctor is forced

to sacrifice his own son in order to save the last heir of a noble,

massacred clan. As the surviving boy grows into a young man,

he sets off to uncover the shattering truth behind his origins.

This gripping tale was the first Chinese play to be translated in

the West and has been retold in countless operas, plays, and

movies around the world. A.C.T. is staging the U.S. premiere

of a heralded new translation from famed poet James Fenton

this June, starring San Francisco native and Tony Award

winner BD Wong. A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff has assembled an

award-winning team to transform the Geary stage for this

timeless epic, including costume designer Linda Cho, whose

acclaimed work has been seen across the country, from

Broadway to the Los Angeles Opera, and set designer Daniel

Ostling, who has created some of A.C.T.’s most memorable

sets, including his recent innovative work on Stuck Elevator

and Major Barbara. Drawn from resplendent ancient cultural

influences, rendered in a strikingly modern hand, a

multistory bamboo structure will be the centerpiece of the

set, while the costumes will be meticulously hand-painted

and hand-dyed to evoke the precise, painstaking art of ancient

Chinese calligraphy.

Joining BD Wong (M. Butterfly, Law & Order: Special

Victims Unit), making his A.C.T. debut, is one of the largest

groups of multigenerational Asian American actors ever

featured together on a U.S. stage: Sab Shimono (Broadway’s

Pacific Overtures, A.C.T.’s After the War and Happy End); Paolo

Montalban (Broadway’s Pacific Overtures and The King and

I); Orville Mendoza (Broadway’s Peter and the Starcatcher);

Julyana Soelistyo (Broadway’s Golden Child); and Marie-France

Arcilla (A.C.T.’s Stuck Elevator); among others. Propelled

by an original musical score by Byron Au Yong (the musical

mastermind behind A.C.T.’s Stuck Elevator), The Orphan of

Zhao will be a feast for the senses, a riveting revenge drama that

feels at once fresh and familiar.

“Discovering The Orphan of Zhao was incredibly eye-

opening for me, an insight into a vivid moment in Chinese

culture and an introduction to a major classic of suspense and

sacrifice rarely seen in the Western theater,” says Perloff. “We

hope our audiences will be as transported and surprised by

this stunning piece of world theater as we were when we first

encountered it.”

LOVE. FAMILY. HONOR. REVENGEA classic Chinese legend finds its way to A.C.T.

DESIGNING FOR A CLASSIC

Zhao costume designer Linda Cho discusses the inspiration for her two dozen plus designs, currently

under construction at the A.C.T. costume shop:

“Initially, we looked at Ming Dynasty paintings and garments, then we took a step away from the historical

reality and created our own abstracted visual vocabulary that referenced the lines of the set, the fluidity of modern

dance and contemporary Chinese artists.”

T H E S U I T / 1 3AC T- S F.O R G | 4 1 5 .74 9. 2 2 2 8 | CONNECT WITH US

CAREY PERLOFF, Artistic Director | ELLEN RICHARD, Executive Director

presents

T H I S P R O D U C T I O N I S M A D E P O S S I B L E B Y

E X E C U T I V E P R O D U C E R SFred M. Levin and

Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation

P R O D U C E R SCeleste and Kevin FordAnne and Michelle ShonkAyn Thorne

A S S O C I A T E P R O D U C E R SJoel Krauska and Patricia FoxChristine and Stan MattisonTim MottJohn and Paula MurphyRichard Rava and Elisa Neipp

A D D I T I O N A L S U P P O R T B Y

B A S E D O N T H E S U I T B Y Can Themba, Mothobi Mutloatse, and Barney Simon

D I R E C T I O N , A D A P T A T I O N , A N D M U S I C B Y

Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne, and Franck Krawczyk

S C E N I C E L E M E N T S

A N D C O S T U M E D E S I G N B Y Oria Puppo L I G H T I N G D E S I G N B Y Philippe Vialatte A S S I S T A N T D I R E C T O R Rikki Henry

T H E C A S TJordan Barbour

Ivanno JeremiahNonhlanhla Kheswa

M U S I C I A N S G U I T A R Arthur Astier P I A N O Mark Christine T R U M P E T Mark Kavuma

M A N A G E M E N T S T A F F C O M P A N Y M A N A G E R / S T A G E M A N A G E R Thomas Becelewski P R O D U C T I O N M A N A G E R / L I G H T I N G M A N A G E R Pascal Baxter

T H E S U I T I S P E R F O R M E D W I T H O U T I N T E R M I S S I O N .

Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’s

The Suit premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord on April 3, 2012.Production: C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

Coproduction: Fondazione Campania dei Festival / Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Young Vic Theatre, Théâtre de la Place—Liège, with the support of the C.I.R.T.

U.S. tour of The Suit is produced by David Eden Productions, Inc.

A B O U T T H E P L A Y

REMEMBERING KOFIFI

By SHANNON STOCKWELL

In 1886, gold was discovered in the Witwatersrand,a mountain range in northeastern South Africa. The

city of Johannesburg appeared almost overnight in

order to accommodate the miners flooding into the area.

About ten years later, Sophiatown was founded five miles

northwest of Johannesburg proper. Initially the land was

intended to be a suburb for whites, and it grew as planned

until the city built a sewer in the immediate vicinity.

White families had the privilege to live elsewhere, and

in order to sell land in the now undesirable Sophiatown,

freehold rights were made available to black South Africans,

making the small township of Johannesburg one of the

few places in the country where blacks could legally own

land. As white residents left, working-class blacks and their

families moved in, and a vibrant community developed.

By the 1950s, Sophiatown was a hub of black culture.

The prospect of living in Sophiatown was enticing for

many blacks, and as a result Sophiatown suffered extreme

overpopulation. Property owners crowded tenants and

subtenants into houses and built makeshift shacks in yards

in order to accommodate as many people as possible.

Overcrowding led to slum conditions. Anglican priest

Trevor Huddleston moved to Sophiatown on a church

mission and, one of the few white people living there, was

heavily involved in the anti-apartheid movement. Though he

loved his community, he catalogued the poor conditions:

“sordid and overcrowded backyards . . . unplanned stretches

of corrugated-iron roofs . . . foetid insanitary yards.” But the

upside of overpopulation was cultural diversity. Huddleston

remembers, “An ‘American’ barber’s shop stands next to an

African herbalist’s store. . . . You can go into a store . . . and

be served by a Chinaman, Indian, or a Pakistani.”

While overpopulation led to a unique diversity in

Sophiatown, poverty led the young men living there to

become gang members called tsotsis. Law enforcement was

largely white and unconcerned with black-on-black crime,

so there was no protection or relief. Drum magazine writer

Bloke Modisane recalls in his autobiography, Blame Me OnHistory, “[We] knew that the law is white and justice casual,

that it could not protect us against the knives of Sophiatown,

so we tolerated the murders whilst the law encouraged them

with its indifference.”

Men of the town were involved in gangs or employed

in Johannesburg and the women also found ways to make

a living: some became what Sophiatown residents called

“shebeen queens.” Shebeens were the response to legislation sthat made it illegal for blacks to drink alcohol. Women ran

these small speakeasies out of their homes, where they sold

stolen and illegally brewed booze. Shebeens became placessfor people to meet, exchange ideas, and unwind. There was

a feeling that one had escaped the oppression of everyday

life—they were places “outside of apartheid.”

Sophiatown Destroyed 1958, by Jürgen Schadeberg (jurgenschadeberg.com). Jürgen Schadeberg is a German-born South African photographer, editor, curator, and teacher known for his depictions of apartheid, particularly his iconic images of Nelson Mandela. During the 1950s he served as Drum magazine’s chief photographer, picture editor, and art director. He has been featured in several International Center of Photography (ICP) exhibitions, most recently Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life. Earlier this year, he was awarded ICP’s Cornell Capa Lifetime Achievement Award.

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A B O U T T H E P L A Y

CONNECT WITH US T H E S U I T / 1 5

The shebeens offered Sophiatowners a sense of community, sbut the combination of overworked, underpaid, and

systematically oppressed men and women with strong

drink led to violent altercations and alcoholism. Modisane

observes, “Getting drunk was a purposeful destruction of

the pain of their lives. . . . They were breaking out, escaping

from themselves.”

There was no denying that life in the township was hard.

There was another side, however, as writer Can Themba

points out in his remembrance “Requiem for Sophiatown,”

“It was not all just shebeeny, smutty, illegal stuff. Some places

it was the stuff that dreams are made of.” He describes his

home in the essay “Crepuscule”:

We drank, joked, conversed, sang, and horse-played.

. . . It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it

was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it

was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.

. . . Sometimes I think, for his sense of contrast and his

sharp awareness of the pungent flavours of life, only

Charles Dickens—or perhaps Victor Hugo—could

have understood Sophiatown.

Sophiatown, lovingly called Kofifi by residents, is

remembered fondly, indeed romanticized, in spite of its

flaws. The increasingly oppressive laws of the apartheid

government told blacks that they were less than human, but

Sophiatown presented a unique opportunity for freedom.

No matter how terrible the conditions, the ability to own

land was symbolic of a profound personal freedom that

the government was determined to destroy. The theme of

ownership comes up frequently in writing about Sophiatown,

such as in Modisane’s autobiography:

The land was bought with the sweat, the scrounging,

the doing without, and it not only was mine, but

a piece of me; the house was mine even if the rain

leaked through the roof and the cold seemed to creep

through the cracks in the ceiling. . . . Whatever else

Sophiatown was, it was home; we made the desert

bloom. . . . We took the ugliness of life in a slum and

wove a kind of beauty.

According to the Afrikaner National Party, however,

Sophiatown was a “political corn inside the apartheid boot.”

The expansion of Johannesburg’s population brought white

families closer and closer to the edges of Sophiatown. In

1953, the government conducted a survey of houses in

Sophiatown and declared that the majority were slums “in

need of reconstruction or demolition.” In 1954, residents

were informed of the impending removal, scheduled to

begin on February 12, 1955.

It was difficult for Sophiatowners to form a cohesive

resistance force with so many contrasting opinions within

the diverse community. The liberal African National

Congress promoted passive resistance, but others felt that

injustice of this magnitude called for a violent reaction.

The government, unaware that Sophiatowners were

floundering for ways to combat the forced removals,

anticipated the worst. On February 9, 1955, they sent 2,000

police into Sophiatown—three days before the date given

in the official notice of eviction. Unprepared and faced with

weapons, most residents quietly packed up their lives and got

into the trucks. Nelson Mandela recalls in his autobiography,

“In the end, Sophiatown died not to the sound of gunfire but

to the sound of rumbling trucks and sledgehammers.”

About 65,000 Sophiatowners were moved to various

townships in and around Soweto between 1955 and 1959.

As they left, their houses were destroyed. In “Requiem,”

Themba recounts, “The government has razed Sophiatown to

the ground, rebuilt it, and resettled it with whites. And with

appropriate cheek, they have called it ‘Triomf.’”

For the artists who were once inspired by what Themba

describes as the “swarming, cacophonous, strutting, brawling,

vibrating life” of Sophiatown, its destruction was symbolic of

white Afrikaner triumph over black South African art and

freedom. Themba wrote of returning after its destruction: “I

still wander among the ruins trying to find out one or two of

the shebeens that [minister of native affairs] Dr. Verwoerd hassoverlooked. But I do not like the dead-eyes with which some

of these ghost houses stare back at me.”

Triomf became a working-class white neighborhood and

remained that way until apartheid rule was overthrown. In

2006, Johannesburg’s mayor officially restored the name

“Sophiatown.” Residents claimed it didn’t matter: “A name is

a name,” they said. But the mayor felt differently: “A name

is something that gives identity to people. . . . Sophiatown is

the past we dare not forget.”

We Won't Move, Sophiatown 1955, by Jürgen Schadeberg (jurgenschadeberg.com)

A longer version of this article, as well as other articles and interviews about The Suit, canbe found in Words on Plays, available in the lobby and online at act-sf.org/wordsonplays.

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A B O U T T H E P L A YAAA B O U T T HT HT H E P L A Y

CANODOISE DANIEL THEMBA was born in 1924 in Pretoria, South Africa, an hour’s drive north of the country’s largest

city, Johannesburg. In 1947, he graduated from Fort Hare

University College with a bachelor’s degree in English

with distinction—a legendary feat at that time. He earned

his teaching diploma at Rhodes University and secured a

teaching position at Johannesburg’s Bantu High School

in Western Native Township, just south of Sophiatown. In

1952, Themba entered Drum magazine’s first short-story

competition with “Mob Story,” his local interpretation of

Romeo and Juliet in which the young lovers are from rivalttsotsi gangs. Out of 1,000 entries, “Mob Story” won the £50iprize. When Drum’s investigative journalist and assistant

editor, Henry Nxumalo, delivered the award, Themba invited

him into his small, book-filled Sophiatown apartment,

where he wrote by candlelight late into the night after the

noisy neighborhood went to sleep. He told Nxumalo,

I walk up and down the streets of Sophiatown for

hours, forming stories in the back of my mind. Then

when I come to plan them—to write them down—

they are in one piece ready to be written. I don’t

think that I’m a believer in writing by inspiration

only—no, it’s just plain hard work all the way. . . .

Winning the Drum contest, I feel inspired to go on

writing and writing until one day, perhaps I’ll be a

really famous author.

He was offered a job writing for Drum soon after.

The monthly publication Drum was founded as The African Drum in March 1951 in Cape Town, but the liberal

magazine focusing on tribal interests didn’t sell, and the

owner moved it to Johannesburg after only four issues,

renamed it, and, most importantly, hired black writers. In

the 1950s, however, black journalists were in short supply

because before Drum there had been no jobs for them, so

Drum’s owner settled for employees who, like Themba, could

write well. The Drum boys, as they came to be known, were

young, most of them under 30, and inexperienced. They

weren’t political analysts, but they were keen observers of life

in the townships and they were the first to show in print the

black side of South Africa—specifically the hardships and

indecencies blacks routinely suffered under apartheid. The

magazine became popular; its writers became local heroes.

The Drum office was a madhouse. The reporters rarely

had to go out in search of news; it came to them. When a

bit of legwork was required, they traveled only as far as the

nearest shebeen speakeasy. It wasn’t uncommon for them to

return to work drunk—if they returned at all. This was part

of an image they promoted in part to endear themselves

to their target audience, working-class urban blacks, who

suspected all educated blacks of being elitist. Frequenting

the shebeens brought them closer to the people, and Themba sgrew very close to the people indeed, nourishing his

reputation as the “shebeen intellectual” one drink at a time.

Themba was a poet and an existentialist, and the harsh

realities of living under ubiquitous racial oppression never

became routine for him. To dull his quick, frustrated mind,

he drank—a lot. He also put on the guise of the cynical,

apolitical clown, always ready with a flippant witticism

to brush aside issues of weight. In the short stories and

articles he wrote for Drum, however, he shows himself to

be someone painfully in touch with how the indignities of

political and social injustice affect intimate relationships and

day-to-day life.

By the end of the 1950s, Themba’s drinking had become

“phenomenal” and he had become impossible to work with.

Drum fired him in 1959. In 1963, the year his short story

“The Suit” was printed, he went into exile in Swaziland, where

he returned to teaching. He died in 1967 of alcohol-induced

thrombosis. A year earlier, the South African government

had declared him a statutory communist and banned his

work. It remained unavailable in his homeland until 1982.

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By DAN RUBIN

CAN THEMBACan Themba, 1952, by Jürgen Schadeberg (jurgenschadeberg.com)

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WHO’S WHO IN THE SUIT

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JORDAN BARBOUR (Actor) is an actor and singer

based out of New

York City. Born in

Willingboro, New

Jersey, in 1983,

Barbour began

working professionally while still in high

school before moving to New York, where

he attended a joint program between

Columbia University and The Juilliard

School. At Juilliard, he studied vocal

performance under the tutelage of David

Clatworthy. Upon completing the program

in 2005, Barbour worked with theater

companies around the United States,

including New York Theatre Workshop, St.

Ann’s Warehouse, Urban Stages, The

Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The

Williamstown Theatre Festival, and

Syracuse Stage (where he received a

Syracuse Area Live Theatre Best Actor

nomination for his work as Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), among

others. Barbour has premiered several new

works in the United States and

internationally, including Langston in

Harlem, an off-Broadway musical about the

life of famed poet Langston Hughes, in

which Barbour appeared as Countee Cullen

at Urban Stages. Barbour also performed at

Pasadena Playhouse in the premiere of

Stormy Weather, a musical about the life of

Lena Horne (played by Leslie Uggams) in

which Barbour played Teddy Jones, her

son. Additionally, Barbour helped create

and then subsequently toured The Shipment, by acclaimed New York

playwright Young Jean Lee. Barbour has

performed in The Shipment at venues

around the globe, including stops at the

Festival d’automne in Paris, Zürcher

Theater Spektakel in Zurich; Hebbel Am

Ufer in Berlin; Thalia Theater in Hamburg

(Germany); and the Sydney Opera House.

IVANNO JEREMIAH (Actor) is a Ugandan-

born actor living in

London. He studied

drama at the BRIT

School of Performing

Arts and the Royal

Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), where

he graduated in 2010. In 2010 Jeremiah

was the recipient of the Alan Bates Bursary,

which commemorates the work of the actor

Sir Alan Bates and is awarded annually to

an actor of exceptional talent. Jeremiah’s

theater credits include Octavius in Julius Caesar with the Royal Shakespeare

Company in London and on the

international tour; Truth and Reconciliation

at the Royal Court; Welcome Home at the

Pleasance Theatre; and As You Like It at the

West Yorkshire Playhouse. During his time

at RADA, Jeremiah performed in a variety

of classical plays, including Romeo and

Juliet, Agamemnon, and The Seagull. Film

and television credits include The Veteran

(2011), Papadopoulos & Sons (2012), a

leading role in ITV’s highly acclaimed series

The Jury II, and ITV’s Injustice.

NONHLANHLA KHESWA (Actor) grew up between two

hardscrabble

townships of

Johannesburg—

Alexandra and

Soweto—and

professes to love them both equally. She

credits several primary school teachers with

instilling in her a love of storytelling and

singing. She attended Soweto’s Morris

Isaacson High School, where, two decades

before her time there—from June 13 to

June 16, 1976—the Soweto Uprising, a

turning point in South African political

history, was set in motion by Teboho

Mashinini and other students. Before

leaving school in 1998, Kheswa was

recruited by South African film and

television director Darrell Roodt (Sarafina!; Cry, the Beloved Country; Dangerous Ground; Winnie Mandela) for a role in his

Soul City. On the heels of that, the

illustrious composer and producer

Lebohang Morake snatched her up for

Disney’s The Lion King, in which she cut her

teeth on Broadway for more than five years.

While making a name as a featured vocalist

in Wyclef Jean’s ensembles for nearly a

decade after leaving The Lion King, Kheswa

delved into both the New York City jazz

scene and Brooklyn’s eclectic, cross-

pollinating youth music culture. Nourished

by that ethos, Kheswa became even more of

a musical polymath. Her band, Kheswa &

T H E S U I T / 1 9CONNECT WITH US

Her Martians, is steeped in the hard-bop

accents of Jackie McLean and Gary Bartz,

the spirituality of John Coltrane and

McCoy Tyner, and, naturally, the diverse

strands of the South African jazz

subculture. Meadowlands, Stolen Jazz is the

band’s 2013 debut recording. Peter Brook

and Marie-Hélène Estienne discovered

Kheswa at a 2011 audition at New York

University for The Suit, and she has since

toured the world with this production.

ARTHUR ASTIER (Guitar) has

played both guitar and bass guitar with

various rock bands. Drawn to innovative

means of expression, he has put his guitars

to the service of other artistic forms such

as plastic arts, theater, and classical music,

principally by means of collaboration

with the composer Franck Krawczyk.

His credits include Krawczyk’s Je ris de me voir si belle, directed by Julie Brochen,

and a number of Christian Boltanski/

Jean Kalman/Krawczyck productions: O Mensch! (Festival d’automne); Happy Hours (Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon);

Pleins jours (Théâtre du Châtelet); Gute Nacht (Nuits Blanches, Paris); and Polvere (Monumenta 2010, Paris’s Grand Palais).

MARK CHRISTINE (Piano) is a

classically trained actor and musician based

in Los Angeles. He has performed in plays

and musicals at some of the top regional

theaters in the United States, including the

Guthrie Theater, Center Theatre Group/

Mark Taper Forum, La Jolla Playhouse, The

Denver Center for the Performing Arts,

and Shakespeare Santa Cruz. His film and

television credits include The New Year, Fortitude, The List, and the independent

TV pilot The Band. Christine has music

directed, orchestrated, and accompanied

for a variety of theaters and independent

projects over the past decade, including

works at Harlem Stage and Signature

Theatre. He has played at numerous venues

in New York and Los Angeles, in addition

to clubs and concert halls across the

country. He holds an M.F.A. from UC San

Diego/La Jolla Playhouse and a B.F.A. from

the University of Michigan.

MARK KAVUMA (Trumpet) is one of

the most celebrated young trumpet players

on the British jazz scene. Having been

voted best soloist at the first Essentially

Ellington competition in the United

Kingdom, Kavuma landed himself two

prestigious gigs as guest soloist with

Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln

Center Orchestra. Only 20 years old

and still advancing his studies at Trinity

College of Music, Kavuma has played with

Jazz Jamaica, Nu Civilization Orchestra,

Brinsley Forde of Aswad, Denis Batiste,

Jay’s Jitter Jive band, the dub/reggae group

Kalichakra, and Kinetika Bloco. Leading

his own trio and quintet, Kavuma has

played at most of London’s top venues,

including the Royal Festival Hall, Royal

Albert Hall, the Barbican, the Queen

Elizabeth Hall, the Round House, and the

Rivoli Ballroom, to name but a few. Having

supported jazz legend John Hendricks at

the legendary Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, he

is one of the youngest people to lead his

own outfit at the club’s famous late show.

Kavuma has been involved with National

Youth Jazz Orchestra, Tomorrow’s Warriors

Youth Jazz Orchestra, and Trinity Jazz

Ensemble. He has also branched out into

other genres with Op Sa! Balkan Band,

Boney M, Gentleman’s Dub Club, the

London Symphony Orchestra, Mulatu

Astatke, and the function band Star.

Kavuma has appeared on BBC ONE’s Paul O’Grady Show with the only band to play

in Great Britain’s athletes’ parade after the

Olympics; he also made an appearance

with Marcus Collins. Recently, Kavuma

was involved with the National Theatre’s

production of The Amen Corner.

PETER BROOK (Director/Adapter) was born in London in 1925. Throughout

his career, he has distinguished himself

in theater, opera, cinema, and writing.

He directed his first play in 1943 and

then went on to direct more than 70

productions in London, Paris, and New

York. His work with the Royal Shakespeare

Company includes Love’s Labour’s Lost (1946), Measure for Measure (1950),

Titus Andronicus (1955), King Lear (1962), Marat/Sade (1964), US (1966),

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1970),

and Antony and Cleopatra (1978). In

1971, Brook founded the International

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WHO’S WHO IN THE SUIT

Centre for Theatre Research in Paris

with Micheline Rozan, and in 1974 he

opened its permanent base in the Théâtre

des Bouffes du Nord. There he directed

Timon of Athens, The Iks, Ubu aux Bouffes, Conference of the Birds, L’Os, The Cherry Orchard, The Mahabharata, Woza Albert!, The Tempest, The Man Who, Qui est là, Happy Days, Je suis un phénomène, Le costume, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Far Away, La mort de Krishna, Ta main dans la mienne, The Grand Inquisitor, Tierno

Bokar, Sizwe Banzi est mort, Fragments, Warum Warum, Love Is My Sin, 11 and 12, and, recently, The Suit—many of these

performing both in French and English.

In opera, Brook directed La bohème, Boris Godounov, The Olympians, Salomé, and

Le nozze de Figaro at Covent Garden;

Faust and Eugene Onegin at New York’s

Metropolitan Opera House; La tragédie de Carmen, Impressions of Pelleas, and Une flûte enchantée at Bouffes du Nord; and Don

Giovanni for the Aix en Provence Festival.

Brook has received many rewards: the Prix

du Brigadier for Timon of Athens (1975),

the Molière Award for the direction of The Tempest (1991), the Grand Prix SACD in

2003, and the Molière d’honneur in 2011.

He recently received honors for Fragments (a 2008 Prix Premio Ubu for Best Foreign

Production in Italy/Milano) and Une flûte enchantée (a 2011 Molière Award for

Musical Theater and a 2013 Moroccan

Federation of Theater’s Professionals

Award). Brook’s autobiography, Threads of Time, was published in 1998 and joins

other titles, including The Empty Space (1968), translated into over 15 languages,

The Shifting Point (1987), There Are No Secrets (1993), Evoking (and Forgetting) Shakespeare (1999), and With Grotowski (2009). His films include Moderato

Cantabile (1959), Lord of the Flies (1963),

Marat/Sade (1967), Tell Me Lies (1967),

King Lear (1969), Meetings with Remarkable Men (1976), The Mahabharata (1989), and

The Tragedy of Hamlet (2002).

MARIE-HÉLÈNE ESTIENNE (Translator/Adaptor) worked with Peter

Brook on casting Timon of Athens (1975)

and consequently joined the Centre

International de Créations Théâtrales for

Ubu aux Bouffes (1977). She was Brook’s

assistant on La tragédie de Carmen and

Le Mahabharata, and she collaborated on

staging The Tempest, Impressions de Pelléas, Woza Albert!, and La tragédie d’Hamlet (2000). She worked on the dramaturgy

of Qui est là. With Brook she coauthored

L’homme qui and Je suis un phénomène at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. She

wrote the French adaptation of Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, by Athol Fugard, John

Kani, and Winston Ntshona; the English

adaptation of 11 and 12, by Amadou

Hampaté Ba (2009); and the French and

English adaptations of Le grand inquisiteur/The Grand Inquisitor (2003), based on

Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. She is

the author of Tierno Bokar (2005). With

Brook, she codirected Fragments, five short

pieces by Beckett, and with Brook and

composer Franck Krawczyk she adapted

Mozart and Schikaneder’s Die Zauberflöte into Une flûte enchantée.

FRANCK KRAWCZYK (Composer) started his musical training in Paris

(piano, analysis, and harmonization) then

continued in Lyon (composition), where

he currently teaches chamber music at

the Conservatoire National Supérieur de

Musique et Danse de Lyon (CNSMD).

Early on, Krawczyk was discovered by

the Festival d’Automne à Paris (Autumn

Festival in Paris), and he started writing

pieces for piano, cello, string quartet,

ensembles, and chamber choir. In 2000

he received the Prix Hervé Dugardin and

the Prix de la SACEM for his orchestral

piece Ruines. His subsequent artistic

collaboration with Christian Boltanski

gave him new perspectives on his music.

With lighting designer Jean Kalman, he

created a dozen pieces (“opus”) in France

and abroad in locations ranging from opera

houses to spaces dedicated to contemporary

art. Krawczyk has developed new forms of

musical creations for various media: theater

(Je ris de me voir si belle with J. Brochen),

readings (Les limbes and Absence with E.

Ostrovski), video (Private Joke with F.

Salès), and dance ([purgatorio] IN VISIONE

with E. Greco and P. C. Scholten). Always

maintaining strong links to the classical

repertoire, Krawczyk has collaborated with

French chamber choir Accentus conductor

Laurence Equilbey and cellist Sonia

Wieder-Atherton. In 2009, upon Peter

Brook’s request, Krawczyk conceived and

interpreted the musical accompaniment

for Love Is My Sin. They continued their

collaboration with Marie-Hélène Estienne

on Une flûte enchantée, a free adaptation of

Mozart’s opera created in November 2010

at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris

and currently touring internationally. His

most recent major work, Polvere for solo

cello, instrumental ensemble, and choir,

was created with Christian Boltanski in

Monumenta 2010 at the Grand Palais and

was subsequently performed in New York,

Milan, and Bologna. Krawczyk is currently

working on his third string quartet.

ORIA PUPPO (Set and Costume Design)

is a scenographer and costume designer

who divides her time between Buenos Aires

and Paris. In Argentina she has designed

sets and costumes for such directors as

Diego Kogan, Rafael Spregelburd, Roberto

Villanueva, Ciro Zorzoli, and Alejandro

Tantanian. She has collaborated with

the latter in Lucerne and Germany (in

both Stuttgart and Mannheim), where

they staged Kafka’s Amerika and Brecht’s

The Threepenny Opera. She has worked

with the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord

on two Peter Brook productions, Tierno Bokar and Une flûte enchantée. She was

the technical director of the Buenos Aires

International Festival from 1999 to 2007,

and her creations include several stage sets

and costumes for opera and performative

installations in contemporary art spaces.

Following her work on The Suit, she began

working on stage sets for a production of

Handel’s La resurrezione, directed by Lilo

Baur for the Opéra National de Paris’s

L’Atelier Lyrique. She is also at work on

the sets and costumes for Jean Genet’s The Maids, a Ciro Zorzoli production featuring

Marilú Marini to be staged in Buenos Aires.

PHILIPPE VIALATTE (Lighting Design) started at the Théâtre des Bouffes

du Nord in 1985 as a light operator on

Le Mahabharata, directed by Peter Brook.

He assisted Jean Kalman for the lighting

design of Woza Albert! and La tempête, also

directed by Brook. Since the creation of The Man Who in Paris in 1993, he has designed

the lights for all the plays directed by Brook

for Bouffes du Nord: Qui est là, Je suis un phénomène, Le costume, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Far Away, La mort de Krishna, La

T H E S U I T / 2 1CONNECT WITH US

tragédie d’Hamlet, Ta main dans la mienne, Tierno Bokar, Le grand inquisiteur, Sizwe Banzi est mort, Fragments, 11 and 12, and

recently Une flûte enchantée. He tours with

these shows and redesigns and adapts the

lighting design for each new venue.

RIKKI HENRY (Assistant Director) studied film production at the University

for the Creative Arts. Previously at the

Young Vic, he directed the Young People’s

production of The Government Inspector. As assistant director at the Young Vic, his

work includes Vernon God Little, Annie Get Your Gun, and the Young People’s

productions of Uncle Vanya and King Lear. Other recent directing work includes From Dover to Calais (Acting Touring Company/

Bristol Old Vic/Young Vic); Jitney, by

August Wilson (Trafalgar Arts/The Old

Red Lion); a staged reading of Woza Albert! (The Albany/Stonecrabs Theatre); and

The Moment Before (Warehouse Theatre

Croydon/Strawberry Picking Festival).

Henry’s assistant directing credits also

include When the Chickens Came Home to Roost, Urban Legends (National Theatre

Studio), and Ghosts or Those Who Return (Arcola Theatre).

THOMAS BECELEWSKI (Company Manager/Stage Manager) was

born in 1980 and has been at the Théâtre

des Bouffes du Nord since 2006. He

originally studied business in France to

become an industrial buyer. He discovered

late his love for contemporary dance

and drama, and he decided to redirect

his career and experienced the French

jazz, theater, and dance scenes. Trained

by Marko Rankov and Philippe Vialatte,

Becelewski has worked on all of Peter

Brook’s productions since that 2006:

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, Fragments, The Grand Inquisitor, 11 and 12, Love Is My Sin, and

A Magic Flute.

PASCAL BAXTER (Production Manager/Lighting Manager) was born in

1964 in Montreal, Canada, and graduated

from the Royal Central School of Speech

and Drama (London) in 1985. He arrived

in Australia in 1988 before moving to

France in 2001. Whilst in Australia, Baxter

worked as a mechanist, electrician, stage

manager, production manager, lighting

designer, and production coordinator/

interpreter. He returned to France to pursue

his love of street theater and is currently

working with the Plasticiens Volants,

ilotopie, La Cellule, and SAS Theatre. He

has toured extensively throughout Europe

with Australian Dance Theatre: Held (2006), Devolution (2007), G (2008 and

2009), and Be Your Self (2011). For Théâtre

de la Ville Paris, he toured with I Am the Wind (2011) and Rhinoceros (2012), and

he also production managed the Merce

Cunningham Dance Company and Sydney

Theatre Company’s Big and Small.

THÉÂTRE DES BOUFFES DU NORD (Premiere Producer) is located near

the Gare du Nord in Paris. Peter Brook

found the former music hall in decline in

1974 and decided to honor the theater’s

100-year history by preserving it in a

state of decay. Built in 1876, the theater

fought an out-of-the-way location and a

long succession of directors until it was

finally condemned and closed in 1952.

Since Brook revived it, it has presented

revolutionary productions, including La tragédie de Carmen, The Mahabharata,

and Tierno Bokar. Brook and partner

Micheline Rozan, in addition to retaining

the building’s history, decided to make the

theater as open and accessible as possible

with reasonable ticket prices and family-

friendly matinees. Brook stepped down in

2011, handing the directorship to Olivier

Mantei and Olivier Poubelle.

DAVID EDEN PRODUCTIONS, LTD., (U.S. Tour Producer) has been one

of the leading American organizations

devoted to producing international work

in the United States for more than 25

years. Most recently, DEP has produced

U.S. tours of Batsheva Dance Company,

Théâtre de la Ville’s production of Ionesco’s

Rhinoceros (2012), Republic of Georgia’s

Ensemble Basiani, Gate Theatre Dublin’s

Endgame/Watt and Krapp’s Last Tape (2012

and 2011), and Maly Drama Theatre’s

Three Sisters at BAM (2012), as well as

North American tours of Galway’s Druid

Theatre’s The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Walworth Farce (2009). David Eden has

worked extensively with major presenting

institutions on special projects, including

Lincoln Center (Mostly Mozart, White

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WHO’S WHO IN THE SUITLight Festival, and Great Performers) and The

Kennedy Center. In 2004, Eden curated

Lincoln Center Festival’s Ashton Celebration,

a two-week centennial retrospective at the

Metropolitan Opera House celebrating

master choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton.

DAVID EDEN PRODUCTIONS, LTD., STAFF:Erica Charpentier, General ManagerChris Buckley, Production ConsultantElise-Ann Konstantin, Visa CoordinatorLori Harrison, Atlas Travel, Travel Agent

FRED M. LEVIN AND NANCY LIVINGSTON, THE SHENSON FOUNDATION (Executive Producers) are stewards of the Shenson Foundation and

lifelong theatergoers who have subscribed to

A.C.T. together for 28 years. A San Francisco

native, Levin attended A.C.T. performances

as a student while Livingston developed

her passion for theater at her hometown

Cleveland Play House. A former advertising

copywriter, Livingston is chair of the A.C.T.

Board of Trustees and also serves on the

Dean’s Advisory Board, College of Fine Arts

at Boston University. In addition she serves

on the board of the National Council for

the American Theatre (NCAT). A former

importer from the Pacific Rim, Levin serves

on the governing boards of the San Francisco

Symphony, the Asian Art Museum, and

the San Francisco Film Society (which his

father founded). He is a past chair of the

San Francisco Performances board. Both

Livingston and Levin serve on the Council

of Advocates of the Boston Arts Academy

and on the National Advisory Board of

Washington, D.C.’s National Museum of

Women in the Arts (NMWA).

ARE YOU MAJORING OR MINORING IN THEATER?

ARE YOU READY FOR AN ARTISTIC, INTELLECTUAL, AND PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION?Embark on a study-away program at one of the country’s most acclaimed

professional theater companies—located in the heart of one of the world’s most

culturally vibrant and diverse cities. Grounded in a rich academic curriculum,

the San Francisco Semester at A.C.T. brings young theater artists into an active,

ongoing engagement with the eclectic and energetic arts community of San

Francisco and the Bay Area.

Through inspiring, experiential courses and wide-ranging artistic encounters,

the San Francisco Semester will pull you into thrilling conversations about

theater while you study in a professional setting, come face to face

with some of the boldest productions anywhere, and collaborate with

some of the best artists in the industry.

Don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity to launch your future!

Fall 2014 Application Deadline: May 1, 2014

Spring 2015 Application Deadline: October 15, 2014

ACT NOW! CALL OR VISIT US ONLINE TO LEARN MORE.

ACT-SF.ORG/SFSEMESTER 415.439.2405

THEATRICAL AND CULTURAL IMMERSION IN THE HEART OF

SAN FRANCISCO

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T H E S U I T / 2 9CONNECT WITH US

A.C.T. PROFILES

CAREY PERLOFF (A.C.T.

Artistic Director)

recently celebrated her

20th year as artistic

director of A.C.T.,

where she most recently

directed Underneath the

Lintel, Arcadia, Elektra

(coproduced by the Getty Villa in Malibu),

Endgame and Play, Scorched, The Homecoming,

Tosca Cafe (cocreated with choreographer Val

Caniparoli and recently toured Canada), and

Racine’s Phèdre in a coproduction with the

Stratford Festival. Known for directing

innovative productions of classics and

championing new writing for the theater,

Perloff has also directed for A.C.T. José Rivera’s

Boleros for the Disenchanted; the world

premieres of Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the

War (A.C.T. commission) and her own

adaptation (with Paul Walsh) of A Christmas

Carol; the American premieres of Tom

Stoppard’s The Invention of Love and Indian

Ink and Harold Pinter’s Celebration; A.C.T.–

commissioned translations/adaptations of

Hecuba, The Misanthrope, Enrico IV, Mary

Stuart, Uncle Vanya, A Mother, and The Voysey

Inheritance (adapted by David Mamet); the

world premiere of Leslie Ayvazian’s Singer’s

Boy; and major revivals of ’Tis Pity She’s a

Whore, The Government Inspector, Happy End

(including a critically acclaimed cast album

recording), A Doll’s House, Waiting for Godot,

The Three Sisters, The Threepenny Opera, Old

Times, The Rose Tattoo, Antigone, Creditors, The

Room, Home, The Tempest, and Stoppard’s Rock

’n’ Roll, Travesties, The Real Thing, and Night

and Day. Perloff’s work for A.C.T. also

includes Marie Ndiaye’s Hilda, the world

premieres of Marc Blitzstein’s No for an Answer

and David Lang/Mac Wellman’s The Difficulty

of Crossing a Field, and the West Coast

premiere of her own play The Colossus of Rhodes

(Susan Smith Blackburn Award finalist).

Her play Luminescence Dating premiered

in New York at The Ensemble Studio Theatre,

was coproduced by A.C.T. and Magic Theatre,

and is published by Dramatists Play Service.

Kinship was developed at the Perry-Mansfield

New Play Festival and at New York Stage and

Film (2013); Waiting for the Flood has received

workshops at A.C.T., New York Stage & Film,

and Roundabout Theatre Company. Higher

was developed at New York Stage and Film and

presented at San Francisco’s Contemporary

Jewish Museum in 2010; it won the 2011

Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation Theatre

Visions Fund Award and received its world

premiere in February 2012 in San Francisco.

Her one-act The Morning After was a finalist

for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre

of Louisville. Perloff has collaborated as a

director on new plays by many notable writers,

including Gotanda, Nilo Cruz, Timberlake

Wertenbaker and Robert O’Hara.

Before joining A.C.T., Perloff was artistic

director of Classic Stage Company in New

York, where she directed the world premiere of

Ezra Pound’s Elektra, the American premiere

of Pinter’s Mountain Language, and many

classic works. Under Perloff’s leadership, CSC

won numerous OBIE Awards, including the

1988 OBIE for artistic excellence. In 1993, she

directed the world premiere of Steve Reich and

Beryl Korot’s opera The Cave at the Vienna

Festival and Brooklyn Academy of Music.

A recipient of France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre

des Arts et des Lettres and the National

Corporate Theatre Fund’s 2007 Artistic

Achievement Award, Perloff received a B.A.

Phi Beta Kappa in classics and comparative

literature from Stanford University and was

a Fulbright Fellow at Oxford. She was on the

faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New

York University for seven years and teaches

and directs in the A.C.T. Master of Fine

Arts Program. Perloff is on the board of the

Hermitage Artist Retreat in Sarasota, Florida,

and is the proud mother of Lexie and Nicholas.

ELLEN RICHARD (Executive Director)

joined A.C.T. as

executive director in

August 2010. She

served previously as

executive director

of off Broadway’s

nonprofit Second Stage Theatre in New York

City. During her tenure at Second Stage, she

was responsible for the purchase contract of

the Helen Hayes Theatre and substantial

growth in subscription income and growth in

individual giving. Under Richard’s leadership,

Second Stage provided the initial home for

the Broadway productions Everyday Rapture,

Next to Normal, and The Little Dog Laughed.

From 1983 to 2005, Richard enjoyed

a rich and varied career with Roundabout

Theatre Company. By the time she departed

as managing director, Roundabout had been

transformed from a small nonprofit on the

verge of bankruptcy into one of the country’s

largest and most successful theater companies

of its kind. Richard is the recipient of six

Tony Awards as producer, for Roundabout

productions of Cabaret (1998), A View from

the Bridge (1998), Side Man (1999), Nine

(2003), Assassins (2004), and Glengarry Glen

Ross (2005). Producer of more than 125 shows

at Roundabout, she had direct supervision

of all general and production management,

marketing, and financial aspects of the theater’s

operations. She conceptualized and oversaw the

redesign of the three permanent Roundabout

stages—Studio 54, the American Airlines

Theatre, and the Harold and Miriam Steinberg

Center for Theatre. She directed the location

search for Cabaret and supervised the creation of

that production’s environmental Kit Kat Klub.

Prior to her tenure at Roundabout,

Richard served as business manager of

Westport Country Playhouse, theater manager

for Stamford Center for the Arts, and business

manager for Atlas Scenic Studio. She began

her career working as a stagehand, sound

designer, and scenic artist assistant.

MELISSA SMITH (Conservatory

Director, Head of

Acting) has served as

Conservatory director

and head of acting in

the Master of Fine Arts

Program at A.C.T.

since 1995. During

that time, she has overseen the expansion of

the M.F.A. Program from a two- to a

three-year course of study and the further

integration of the M.F.A. Program faculty and

student body with A.C.T.’s artistic wing; she

has also taught and directed in the M.F.A.

Program, Summer Training Congress, and

Studio A.C.T. Prior to assuming leadership of

the Conservatory, Smith was the director of

theater and dance at Princeton University,

where she taught introductory, intermediate,

and advanced acting. She has taught acting

classes to students of all ages at various

colleges, high schools, and studios around the

continental United States, at the Mid-Pacific

Institute in Hawaii, New York University’s La

Pietra campus in Florence, and the Teatro di

Pisa in San Miniato, Italy.  She is featured in

Acting Teachers of America: A Vital Tradition.

Also a professional actor, she has performed

regionally at the Hangar Theatre, A.C.T.,

California Shakespeare Theater, and Berkeley

Repertory Theatre; in New York at Primary

Stages and Soho Rep; and in England at the

Barbican Theater (London) and Birmingham

Repertory Theatre. Smith holds a B.A. from

Yale College and an M.F.A. in acting from Yale

School of Drama.